Greek New Testament

Evidence for the Old Latin and Vulgate versions original: Italae et Vulgatae rationis; the 'Itala' refers to the various Latin translations that existed before Jerome’s late 4th-century Vulgate has been presented here more fully than by any previous scholar. However, at the beginning of this work, the edition of the Vratislav manuscript also known as Codex Vratislaviensis was not yet available, nor was the Fulda manuscript Codex Fuldensis, an important 6th-century manuscript containing a Harmony of the Gospels. Likewise, for at least the second part of the Gospels, it was possible to draw the Jerusalem Lectionary a book of Gospel readings for church services from the Verona edition. We have taken the Armenian version not only from those notes which Griesbach wrote by hand in the margin of Wetstein’s edition, but also from a collation a word-for-word comparison of different manuscripts to identify variations performed by Charles Rieu for the use of Tregelles. Furthermore, the efforts of Thomas Pell Platt have increased the number of readings from the Ethiopic version. ^1 Regarding the Greek Fathers influential early Christian theologians whose quotations of the Bible provide evidence for ancient readings, we have consulted—with tireless study—Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, Hippolytus, Eusebius, Basil, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, and Cyril of Alexandria, among others; of the Latin Fathers, we have used Tertullian, Cyprian, Lucifer Lucifer of Cagliari, a 4th-century bishop known for his strict adherence to scripture, and others. Just as these two types of evidence—the ancient versions and the writings of the Fathers—have been applied to the critical apparatus the scholarly footnotes documenting every variation found in ancient sources much more diligently than before, they have also gained far greater authority in our work for restoring the most ancient text than is usually the case.

This was not done without good reason. It has been clearly demonstrated through numerous examples that the most ancient translators agree so closely with our oldest Greek manuscripts that they must be considered to have drawn from the same or very similar sources. In this regard, nothing is more significant than that remarkable relationship which exists between the Sinaitic manuscript Codex Sinaiticus, the 4th-century Bible discovered by Tischendorf and the Old Latin witnesses, a connection often reinforced by the agreement of the Curetonian Syriac an ancient Syriac translation of the Gospels discovered in the Nitrian Desert of Egypt. Indeed, quite a few readings which one might have suspected the Sinaitic or the Palatine manuscript Codex Palatinus, an Old Latin manuscript designated as 'e'—to mention this one specifically among the others—of preserving through some individual whim, have been proven to originate from an even older Greek source when the two manuscripts are compared.

Now, having surveyed all the sources from which the history of what they call the Sacred Text can be understood, two things especially [become clear]...

^1 We preferred to exclude most of the Arabic and Slavonic readings from the apparatus because of the ambiguity with which they are burdened and the meager value they possess.